Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/51

 HISTORY OF GYNECOLOGY IN AMERICA xli

4. Special societies devoted to gynecology and obstetrics, exclusively.

5. The publication of journals devoted exclusively to obstetrics and gynecology, associated it might be with pediatrics.

6. The publications of books devoted to diseases of women.

7. The founding of special hospitals for the treatment of gynecological patients.

8. The original work of certain individuals. State and county societies.

I cannot here do more than refer to the early existence of some of our societies, and as an example of the kind of work they were wont to do refer to Horatio Storer's Digest in his "Outline History of American Gynecology," published in the "Journal of the Gynecological Society of Boston," 1869-1870.

Some of these societies were:

1735. A Medical Society in Boston.

1765. The Philadelphia Medical Society.

1766. The New Jersey State Medical Society. 1769(?). A Medical Society in New York City. 1781. The Massachusetts Medical Society. 1787. The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. 1789. The Medical Society of South Carolina. 1789. The Medical Society of the State of Delaware.

1791. The New Hampshire Medical Society.

1792. The Connecticut State Medical Society.

1797. The Academy of Medicine of Philadelphia.

1798. The Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of the State of Maryland. 1847. The American Medical Association.

1878. The Chicago Gynecological Society.

For a list of these and other societies, some now extinct, see "A Century of American Medicine," vol. lxxii, "American Journal of the Medical Sciences," 1870 (Dr. John S. Billings).

Among these early societies which issued their transactions for the edification of their members and the medical public at large were:

The New Jersey Medical Society in 1766.

Massachusetts Medical Society in 1790.

The College of Physicians of Philadelphia in 1793.

Medical Society of the State of New York in 1808.

Medical Society of the State of Maine in 1834.

American Medical Association in 1848.

It would be going too far afield to mention here the numerous medical journals, often of short existence, which also did much to stimulate study and diffuse information. The best and most representative of these was undoubtedly the veteran "American Journal of the Medical Sciences,"